microbiology of the Built Environment network (#microBEnet) 10/14 roundup and newsletter

We publish a newsletter every month here at microBEnet.  And I thought it would be good to also publish to the blog the various summaries and roundups from the newsletter.  Past newsletters are archived here.  Here are some of the highlights from this latest newsletter. MicroBEnet Blogs A summary of the recent topics posted on microBE.net …

New paper of interest on combining qPCR & sequencing to quantify fungi in aerosols

Nice new paper from Karen Dannemiller et al. (the senior author is Jordan Peccia from Yale): Citation: Dannemiller, K. C., Lang-Yona, N., Yamamoto, N., Rudich, Y., & Peccia, J. (2013). Combining Real-Time PCR and Next-Generation DNA Sequencing to Provide Quantitative Comparisons of Fungal Aerosol Populations. Atmospheric Environment in Press. The abstract is copied below.  Basically, they …

Storify of tweets from QIIME/VAMPs meeting and ITS fungal meeting in Boulder

For those wanting to catch up on the workshop discussions that happened last week in Boulder, we’ve pulled together all the tweets into a Storify! Includes coverage of the QIIME/VAMPS bioinformatics workshop, and the subsequent fungal meeting focused on resources for ITS gene barcoding. [View the story “QIIME/VAMPS and ITS fungi #microbenet meetings” on Storify]

“Germs” in cars

When people hear “microbiology of the built environment” they tend to focus on buildings.  But the built environment also includes things like trains, cars, planes, even the space station where some cool microbiology work has taken place. When looking for work on the microbiology of these environments I came across a small, non-peer reviewed study …

Wanted: Sample collections for the Earth Microbiome Project EMP; help make an open Field Guide to the Microbes

A cross – posting here.  On my “Tree of Life” blog I have just written about the “Earth Microbiome Project” and its call for samples.  This may be of interest to those working on the Microbiology of the Built Environment.  For more information see: The Tree of Life: Wanted: Sample collections for the Earth Microbiome Project …

Norman Pace visits UC Davis

Norman R. Pace, from UC Boulder, gave a talk at UC Davis yesterday about microbial diversity.  In his talk he discussed some of his recent Sloan Foundation funded work on “microbiology of the built environment” including studies of shower heads, indoor swimming pools, water supplies, and hospitals. Pace is one of the pioneers of DNA …